Scali wrote:

I don't really have a choice, since I want to develop DX12 code. But so far it's been quite decent. Perhaps not yet as rock-soli […]
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I don't really have a choice, since I want to develop DX12 code. But so far it's been quite decent. Perhaps not yet as rock-solid as Win8.1 so far, but nothing major.

I really do think Win7 is the new XP, because what happened with WinXP was that a lot of people had no idea about Vista, not the good parts either. So when they finally upgraded to Win7, they were amazed by all sorts of things that weren't new to Win7, but had been in Vista as well (such as IO prioritization).
What I see happening now is that people are still on Win7, and have no idea about Win8.x, which is more lightweight and boots a lot faster, especially on UEFI systems. So when they finally upgrade to Win10, they are impressed by this... But the joke's on them, because they could have had this for years already.
I've upgraded two old laptops from Win7 to Win10, and they run better now. Might get a few more years of life out of them. One of them is my mom's, which was getting rather slow with Win7. I told her that if she were to buy a new laptop, she'd get Win10 on it anyway, so we might as well put it on the old one and get used to it like that, it got the free upgrade anyway. It seems to work okay for her. It certainly is quite a bit faster (both Win7 and Win10 are the x64 version. It's an old Pentium DualCore (budget Core2 Duo) 2.2 GHz system with 3 GHz and a slow HDD).

Microsoft won't allow another WinXP situation to develop. When Windows 7 support ends, there won't be endless extensions like there were with XP. They'll drag the luddites kicking and screaming if necessary to a newer version of Windows. Corporate clients might get extended support if they are willing to pay for it, like now with XP, but the general public will be forced to upgrade or be left behind.

SquallStrife wrote:

You know that most (if not all) of those relate specifically to the CEIP, which you are free to opt out of. […]
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KT7AGuy wrote:

This is a list of updates I'm currently avoiding to keep my Win7 system clean: […]
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This is a list of updates I'm currently avoiding to keep my Win7 system clean:

KB2505438
KB2952664
KB2976978
KB2990214
KB3021917
KB3022345
KB3035583
KB3050265
KB3068708
KB3075249
KB3080149

Anybody got any others to add to the list?

You know that most (if not all) of those relate specifically to the CEIP, which you are free to opt out of.

Nobody has yet presented any compelling evidence to the contrary.

The closest thing so far is that one Czech blog that every news source is linking back to directly or indirectly. (Their advertising impressions must be skyrocketing!) And the extent of their evidence is "We captured this with a program." without any screenies, logs, capture files, anything. They have a list of hostnames. Whoop de doo.

In my own personal experience, opting out wasn't enough. When I noticed strange disk activity and tracked down the affecting exe, I ended up having to disable 3 different tasks in Task Scheduler. Maybe it was a fluke, creepy nonetheless.

Others might find this interesting as well:
https://blockwindows.wordpress.com/

simbin wrote:

In my own personal experience, opting out wasn't enough. When I noticed strange disk activity and tracked down the affecting exe, I ended up having to disable 3 different tasks in Task Scheduler. Maybe it was a fluke, creepy nonetheless.

What do you mean "fluke"? Did you note which tasks you stopped? What concluded that they were related to CEIP?

SquallStrife wrote:

simbin wrote:

In my own personal experience, opting out wasn't enough. When I noticed strange disk activity and tracked down the affecting exe, I ended up having to disable 3 different tasks in Task Scheduler. Maybe it was a fluke, creepy nonetheless.

What do you mean "fluke"? Did you note which tasks you stopped? What concluded that they were related to CEIP?

I say fluke because I don't think those processes are supposed to run when you tick opt out.
The exe was tied to one of those tasks I think wsqmcons

You can disable them here:
Task Scheduler/Microsoft/Windows/Customer Experience Improvement Program
Consolidator
KenelCeipTask
UsbCeip

That's much clearer. Thanks.

As a guess, I'd say maybe the data they collect could be used when making app crash reports if you chose to do so?

In any case, unless a ProcMon session revealed they were communicating without consent, I wouldn't be worried. CEIP has been around for like 15 years now, somebody would have noticed if it was phoning home. Plus MS would be in some pretty deep strife if that opt-out wasn't honoured, when you consider all the places Windows is deployed, and the value of their Software Assurance agreements to their existence.

OTOH, disabling services frees up resources which is always nice! 😀

wow,

so paranoid

much unnecesary bullshit

if you work with the pc i just dont recommend to upgrade for now, let it mature. Ive seen windows 10 in about 10 computers already. The behavior is strangely different, some pcs/laptos went super fast, others sluggish, 2 had

Living wrote:

wow,
... others sluggish, 2 had

Good lord, cut off mid sentence. Windows 10 must have censored his post.

I'd tend to agree that letting Windows 10 mature isn't a bad idea, I've had a few odd things happen. Nothing major - things like the Windows key not working consistently, the search function losing its train of thought, and remote connections to old versions of Windows server not working as expected. And I rolled one of my machines back to Windows 7 the other night because 10 just wasn't running nicely.

badmojo wrote:

I'd tend to agree that letting Windows 10 mature isn't a bad idea

I agree, but I would recommend upgrading to Windows 8.1 if you haven't already, because that already is mature, and gives you most of the benefits Windows 10 would give over Windows 7.

alexanrs wrote:

As far as privacy goes its not like Google doesn't monitor every search result you click on anyway, regardless of your OS or browser.

There are options and choices available for that as well.

DuckDuckGo
Pale Moon
Disconnect
Ghostery
NoScript
BetterPrivacy
ublock Origin / AdBlock
HTTPS Everywhere / Encrypted Web
Privacy Badger

People are just lazy and willfully ignorant, so they accept what MS is cramming down their throats. It's easier than thinking, I guess.

KT7AGuy wrote:

There are options and choices available for that as well. […]
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alexanrs wrote:

As far as privacy goes its not like Google doesn't monitor every search result you click on anyway, regardless of your OS or browser.

There are options and choices available for that as well.

DuckDuckGo
Pale Moon
Disconnect
Ghostery
NoScript
BetterPrivacy
ublock Origin / AdBlock
HTTPS Everywhere / Encrypted Web
Privacy Badger

People are just lazy and willfully ignorant, so they accept what MS is cramming down their throats. It's easier than thinking, I guess.

🤣 The Facebook Phone Zombie Generation just does as they're told. Nowadays, opinions = facts.

Just to be clear, I'm not racist against Facebook Phone Zombies. Don't sue me!

Windows 10 has killed SecuROM and SafeDisc DRM

On the one hand, let's party on down.

On the other hand, way more compatibility fixes now need mentioning at PCGamingWiki and Vogons: The Guide->Windows and the like. 😁

I'm good for my games since I gather all the nocd\online fixes when I first get the game like a responsible person. woot.

And people are still going nuts about "Windows 10 can't run pirated games! So we can't crack games using SecuROM and SafeDisk whe legally own!"
It would be funny if it wasn't sad

simbin wrote:

Just to be clear, I'm not racist against Facebook Phone Zombies. Don't sue me!

I'm pretty sure it's OK to discriminate against zombies of any type, whether they use FB or not.

The dead do not file lawsuits.

Stiletto wrote:

Windows 10 has killed SecuROM and SafeDisc DRM
On the one hand, let's party on down.
On the other hand, way more compatibility fixes now need mentioning at PCGamingWiki and Vogons: The Guide->Windows and the like. 😁

I've kept a legacy WinXP box just for this very reason. Even Win7 has issues with games that are infected by StarForce.

sliderider wrote:

Microsoft won't allow another WinXP situation to develop. When Windows 7 support ends, there won't be endless extensions like there were with XP. They'll drag the luddites kicking and screaming if necessary to a newer version of Windows. Corporate clients might get extended support if they are willing to pay for it, like now with XP, but the general public will be forced to upgrade or be left behind.

^ Thanks for the honesty and good luck with those strategies.

It's well known that Windows 10 spies on you. I am very surprised that some people on a such site with at least some IT knowledge try to prove otherwise. There are instructions on internet on how to check it and see for your self. If you will do everything right a step by step, you will see screenshots of your desktop being sent to Microsoft. When Windows 7 completely dies I'll have to start using Linux as well.

Yes, because you have a lot of sources for this.

If you're this concerned, why aren't you running Linux now? You can't trust any proprietary software, after all.

And Windows 7 has been supposedly patched to spy on you as well. Not that I believe that, though.

Lets face, MS will make a big push for DX12, and will probably not bother extending support as well. Windows 7 is getting more and more obsolete, with its incomplete support for UEFI and newer hardware standards. One should either make the switch to Linux (and the lack of MS Office and several games) or be prepared to upgrade in the near future.

Dreamer_of_the_past wrote:

There are instructions on internet on how to check it and see for your self. If you will do everything right a step by step, you will see screenshots of your desktop being sent to Microsoft.

[citation needed]

Dreamer_of_the_past wrote:

It's well known that Windows 10 spies on you. I am very surprised that some people on a such site with at least some IT knowledge try to prove otherwise. There are instructions on internet on how to check it and see for your self. If you will do everything right a step by step, you will see screenshots of your desktop being sent to Microsoft. When Windows 7 completely dies I'll have to start using Linux as well.

Give Fedora a shot when you do, I use it every day and I would never go back to Windows. Here's what I learned while trying out distributions and what I thought of them.

Ubuntu - Back when I was first trying Linux and thinking about switching I tried Ubuntu because everyone claimed it was the most popular and easiest to learn distribution, my experience with it was something else completely. Unity (Ubuntu's primary desktop interface) was an absolute mess to use... as a Windows user I found Unity's search method of locating programs a real pain in the backside, in addition it's icon tray on the left and menus at the top would have probably been fine for a Macintosh user but as a Windows user it annoyed me to no end. Also it's apparent integration with Amazon shop was a bit disconcerting but at the time I hadn't heard about the controversy surrounding that. The other thing is while I was an Ubuntu user on the side (I was still on Windows XP on my main machine), Canonical got hacked and tons of user data was leaked apparently or something to that effect, all I know now is that the forums went down and all there was for quite a while was a message saying users should change their passwords etc. At the time I had just gotten internet again for the first time since 2000 and it scared me that the developers of my operating system had been hacked but surprisingly that was not the thing that made up my mind, I wanted a more traditional interface for Ubuntu and I had read online that you could revert to Gnome 2 from Unity so of course I followed the instructions and gave installing Gnome a shot but it ended up seriously borking the system to a point where I hadn't a hope in hell of fixing it. Avoid Ubuntu like the plague. 🤣

(I found the message on an article!) http://hothardware.com/news/canonicals-ubuntu … ion-compromised

Mint - To be honest I can't exactly tell you why I stopped using Linux mint other than it is slow on security updates and you have to reinstall the whole operating system to use the latest version, there is no way to upgrade internally (at least there wasn't when I was using it). The other glaring thing that I had a problem with was the fact that it used the Ubuntu kernel on the main version (There is a Debian variant but that version is basically left to rot most of the time and lacks most of the good features of the Ubuntu version) which means it inherits a lot of the bad design ideas Ubuntu has, which embarrassingly enough I don't remember what they were other than general instability and using a custom replacement for Xorg instead of Wayland like every other distro. Other than that though I really liked it at the time, everything was modern feeling and intuitive there was very little I had to do out of the box because they adopted the same attitude with non-free software as Ubuntu. If you are running it on a low end computer however I would recommend MATE for the desktop environment instead of Cinnamon since it can really bog down a system that is a little old.

Debian - Debian is the distribution which Ubuntu is based on. Debian is known for it's stability, it's devs are insanely cautious and as such upgrades are far apart, you will be using the same version of Debian for a while so get used to it. Basically this is ideal for servers where security and sameness is required but for the average user it can be a frustrating experience. Everything about Debian feels archaic, the installer is ascii like the DOS installers of yore and once it's installed every bit of software available on the Synaptic Package manager is versions behind, if you manage to get non-free packages working then steam will install but most likely not run because of something else being out of date. Speaking of synaptic - the GUI for the Package manager is also a frustrating experience, it's hard to navigate and just like everything else about Debian feels OLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLD. Also you cannot install MATE from the installer which is a bummer for me because I love MATE. Another thing is I had trouble getting it to work with my graphics card, as soon as I installed the AMD drivers the whole system freaked out and graphical glitches appeared everywhere, sure I could have fixed it but I was already looking to jump at this point. It gets bonus points however because every version is codenamed after a character from Toy Story. 😜

OpenSuSE - OpenSuSE is a distro based on the Enterprise linux version of SuSE. OpenSuSE is a lot like fedora except it's also like Debian in that it's kinda showing it's age with the way it works. It's Package Manager GUI is clunky to say the least and just like Debian it takes the whole free software thing very seriously. I didn't use this for long so there really isn't much to say...

Gentoo - Took one look at the installation process and gave up... Seriously though, you have to build your OS from scratch basically. Kudos if you can do it but I wasn't about to try. 🤣

Fedora - I tried this one on a suggestion from a friend, I installed it (which was easy and used a GUI) and began to use it and I loved it. The only downsides are these: Fedora takes free software seriously as well so you are going to have to tweak some stuff to get real things most users want, the good thing though is this is relatively easy and I can guarantee it works. The other thing is the fact that it comes with Gnome 3 out of the box. Having already tried and hated Unity I was not a fan of Gnome 3. I highly recommend installing Cinnamon or MATE, hell even LXDE or KDE if that's your thing. Fedora is modern though in every way, it's package manager feels simple and easy to understand, you can upgrade to the next version with only a few commands in the shell and all the packages available are for the most part up to date. Seriously give it a try you'll like it.